Faery Worlds - Six Complete Novels (17 page)

“Wear your totem doll on a cord around your neck,” she added. “You will present it after the Testing to whomever will be your new teacher, and receive a totem of adulthood in turn.”

She shooed the Initiates into two long columns, boys and girls, to trek from the Tor of the Initiates to the Tor of the Stone Hedge. They wore their tribal colors. Also, they had to don again the blindfolds and submit to having their hands tied behind their backs.

Though she kept sharp watch over her assigned charges, Brena also glanced from time to time at her daughters, who were in another group. Tension knotted her belly like labor cramps. She suspected she was more nervous than they were. The night of her own Initiation had been the worst and best of her life. She forced herself to take deep breaths.

Three rings of menhirs, upright slabs of granite, formed concentric circles on the flat summit of the hill. If one looked closely, one could see strange symbols etched into the stones. No one knew what the glyphs represented or who had put them there. It was believed that the Aelfae had built the circle of stones, and inscribed them, but others said the Brundorfae had done it, and others, that the Deathsworn had built the monument. Some said all three shared in the building of the rings, one ring each.

The Zavaedies and Tavaedies in charge of the Initiates rolled away a huge stone from a hole in the ground. They drove the blindfolded children down the hole, into the darkness. Remembering again her own Initiation, the stark fear, the chill close brush of death, then warm stroking hands, Brena’s stomach roiled.
Oh, my daughters, I’m sorry. You have to face the darkness on your own.

Once the last child had descended into the dark, the adults rolled the stone back over the hole, sealing them under the earth. They took their position just inside the innermost ring of stones, to begin their long vigil.

Rthan

Rthan and his men slipped the canoe into the river. He leaped in first. The warriors climbed in and crouched behind him. All were dressed in full war regalia. Meira, his daughter who was not his daughter, glowed blue from her seat in the prow, where she leaned on the graven head of the war canoe. She looked so small and out of place, like a child playing where she didn’t belong.

As if sensing his continued reticence, she turned to him with his daughter’s solemn face. “Never forget what they did to me and mama.”

He saw again the hideously charred bodies, burnt and twisted. He didn’t need her reminders or her faery games.

“It wasn’t you they murdered.” He reminded himself more than her, not from disloyalty but for his sanity’s sake. Of late, he found it easier and easier to forget who she really was. “You’re immortal.”

“I speak for her because she can never again speak for herself.” The blue faery child didn’t flinch. “Will you avenge me, Daddy?”

He tightened his grip on the oars and maneuvered the boat into the swiftest part of the current. He could hear the water slapping the sides of other boats setting out from shore, an entire war party. The glow from her body illuminated the moonless night, highlighting ripples on the black waters.

“I will avenge you, Meira, I swear it,” he said.

Kavio

Kavio noted the changes to the Tors of Yellow Bear since his first visit eight years ago. It had seemed bigger then—he’d only been ten years old—but that was the distortion of a child’s awe. He remembered running down the crazy, curvy paths between the beehive shaped houses, first in play, again after the old man tried to kill him. He recalled the jingle of gold bangles on the ankles and wrists of Hertio’s daughter Lulla and the smell of the boiling nuggets from the smelting ovens.

Beyond the tors, across the river, the land sloped up into a forest of giant sequoias. The oaks and sycamores at their knees bowed before them like conquered warriors. His father’s army had camped on those slopes, keen to make peace but prepared to wage war. Finally, he made himself look at the Unfinished Tor, where he had killed another human being for the first time, and almost started that war.

He could still feel the old man’s breath on his neck, stinking of beer and rotted teeth, shouting, Your father murdered my son, and I will pay his deathdebt with your blood. It was the first time Kavio had met anyone who did not regard his father as a savior, and after that terrible day, and the terrible night one moon later, upon the Tor of the Stone Hedge, he had never looked at his father the same way again.

In Yellow Bear, Kavio had known terror, humiliation and disillusionment, he’d spilled human blood, and been abandoned to die as a slave. It felt like home. If Hertio would welcome him—by no means a certain thing—did he dare settle here? His allies expected him to appeal to Yellow Bear for assistance. His enemies no doubt expected it too. Deep in his gut, he had an uneasy premonition that if he stayed here it would cost blood; no last minute human sacrifice would stave off war this time.

I’m sorry Yellow Bear. I must pass you by,
he bid the tribehold, and turned his feet south to follow the river downstream, toward the ocean.

The valley of the Tors was large enough that by evening, Kavio could still see the final tor, the Tor of the Stone Hedge. Along the river, bomas for lookout scouts, made from wood and branches, guarded the tribehold from strangers like him. Several of these scouts noted his progress, but did not challenge him when they saw he was alone and skirting around the edge of the valley.

Toward midnight, they stopped watching him and looked in another direction. Following their interest, he saw two columns of tiny figures walk up the hill, the leaders holding torches against the darkness.

The Initiation,
he thought. In the Labyrinth, it was slightly different. It took place in the stone maze beneath the tribehold. Nonetheless, he recognized the ceremony. His own Initiation had not been but three years ago. Unwillingly, his thoughts skipped to the young Initiate girl, Dindi.
Let it be,
he warned himself.
It’s no use casting nets where you can’t fish.
Spurred on by that unhappy thought, he decided to press on without camping for the night.

The new moon shed little light on the river at his side, but in the distance, other lights sparkled on the river like sapphire glitter. Coming upstream. Kavio tensed. The lights must be on boats. Who would be boating upstream in the middle of the night? Illuminated by what? Torchlights?

No,
he realized.
Fae lights.
That eerie blue iridescence looked nothing like the yellow-orange of ordinary fire.

He crept closer, crouched behind river reeds for concealment. The lights were still far downstream, but he could make out the silhouettes of bark-sided boats with carved wooden prows. Blue fae perched on top of each of the prows, their phantasmagoric faces uglier than the carvings meant to represent them. Behind the fae, each boat contained one Tavaedi in blue regalia, and a handful of tattooed bare-chested, muscular warriors.

Blue Waters tribesmen, obviously. What was their goal? What could they hope to achieve? Kavio expected to hear the ram’s horn sounded from one of the boma towers, but the lookouts appeared not to notice the boats.

The same fae light that reveals them to me, conceals the intruders from them, Kavio realized. The Yellow Bear scouts could not see the Blue, which meant that the Blue Waters warriors could hit at least one target quickly before Yellow Bear could muster its own warriors in defense. Where? Oh. Of course. They must know that tonight is the Initiation. Two hundred vulnerable captives, perfect hostages…half of them girls just on the brink of womanhood.

Kavio almost stumbled with relief when he saw a sept of Yellow Bear warriors rushing to meet him.

“We haven’t much time,” he gasped between heavy breaths, “We must intercept them before they attain the high ground of the tor…”

The warriors aimed their spears at him. The sept leader chewed a leaf, supremely unalarmed. “Throw down your weapons and come with us.”

“Are you mad? I’m not your enemy. Your enemy is attacking the Tor of the Stone Hedge! They’re trying to capture the Initiates!”

“I don’t see any enemy but you.”

“Boats are coming up the river…”

“Our scouts would have seen them. They saw only you. Why were you running toward our tribehold?”

“To warn you, you squash-headed buffoons…”

The sept-leader punched Kavio in the gut just as two warriors to either side of him grabbed his arms. He resisted the urge to fight his way free. If he bashed their skulls together, it would make his point more difficult to convey.

“I’m on your side,” he repeated. “I’m from the Rainbow Labyrinth, I’m an ally.”

“We’ll let Hertio decide that,” said the sept-leader.

“There’s no time, there could be a massacre by then!”

The sept-leader curled his lip. “Sure.” Several of the warriors snickered. “Take him. If he fights, kill him.”

Dindi

You never forget the night of your Initiation.

Always, you are taken by force. By now you know the rough hands twisting your arms and blindfolding you belong to your own kinsmen, but this doesn’t reassure you, since by now, also, you have heard the other Initiates whisper legends that some children will die during the rite. The tribe has no use for the weak.

Switches, whittled from green saplings, strong and springy, sting the back of your thighs to herd you down stone steps, into some kind of underground cavern. The stone beneath your bare feet is unhewn, too rough for a kiva. The chamber narrows, until you have to crawl, but your hands are tied behind your back, so you writhe like a worm. Gravel grinds under your belly and cuts up your knees.

You aren’t aware of faint light at the edges of your blindfold until even that tiny splinter of light is extinguished. The darkness that follows is so heavy it feels like a rock sitting on your chest. The breathing of the Initiates around you merges into a single rhythm of in-breath and out-breath, as if the cave itself gasped and heaved.

They’ve put a stone over the hole, someone whimpers.

Hush, whisper a dozen others. Initiates are not permitted to talk.

A hiss and the pungent smell of urine. No one admits to pissing themselves, but sniggers and curses lash out against the unseen coward. Disembodied conversations turn into a competition between complainers and those trying to enforce the rule of silence.

Hours of dark teach you to see shapes in sound. You assign faces from memory to a cough, a murmur, a hum. Like bloated rats, bodies skritch past, using one another at guideposts, and you feel the passage of someone’s long hair across your shoulder, the press of bone beads from a costume into your arm. When you find yourself squeezed too tightly between an unwashed boy and the ticklish smell of bobbing feathers from a girl’s headdress, you wriggle yourself free. By now, no one obeys the stricture against silence, so you add your voice to the coos in the darkness, seeking friends. You find Gwenika.

You snuggle back to back against your friend, so you can untie each other’s bindings. Thereafter you stay side by side, hand in hand, despite the heat. For the cave is sweltering, not cold as you generally expect caves to be. Reaching up, you feel the ceiling right above you where you crouch; you could not stand if you tried. There are over a hundred bodies crushed into a cave no higher than a badger. The stench of urine is stronger now, but the sweat is even more overpowering. The spicy breath from someone who mangles your knee as he crawls by makes your stomach roil. It is a sign of how hungry you are that even this foul reminder brings to mind stacks of round, flat bread freshly toasted in the oven and piled with cheese, beans and onions.

You and Gwenika exchange confidences in tones pitched low enough for just each other. For once, she doesn’t complain about all the exotic diseases she has suffered. She doesn’t whine at all. Her voice is dreamy as she describes pets she’s had over the years, a long string of frogs, gophers and sparrows. Creatures she found injured and nursed to health. She describes the sycamore trees around her clanhold, their pale trunks perfect for climbing, and the kinds of songbirds which nest there. You talk about the hills of your home, how trails wind by sudden vistas and cliffs overlook waterfalls which shower into a cloud of rainbow mist. You don’t admit to dancing with the fae because even here, even now, where the darkness spills secrets, you have secrets you don’t know how to share.

What you would do for a jug of cool water.

You ask if she’s ever killed or kissed anyone. No, she says. What about you? No. Would you ever? If he forced me to, you say, and she says, forced you to kiss? No, no, forced me to kill. You both giggle madly as if this is much funnier than it really is. You admit your greatest fear is to die by fire, and she says her greatest fear is to die alone, in the dark. She squeezes your hand tighter.

The darkness is like an animal now, panting hotly against your neck, squeezing your chest. The air tastes stale. Gulping it faster doesn’t help.

Discontent rumbles across the Initiates like a wave on a night sea. The air is running out. We will suffocate. We must free ourselves. Maybe this is the true test? Maybe this is what we must do to prove ourselves worthy of adulthood in the tribe? If we all push against the rock covering the entrance, we can lift the stone.

The stone cannot be lifted—it cannot even be found. Hundreds of hands trace the rock walls. Hundreds of fingers scratch frantically for a crevice or a crack. It is as though the entrance never existed, entombing you all in solid rock.

Others keep looking, but you decide it is a waste of breath, breath more precious now than bread or water. Gwenika will not let go of your hand. You don’t chide her even when you fear she might crush your knuckles into one shapeless lump. You whisper, We’ll be fine, but you are thinking about the legends of the children of Initiations past who didn’t survive. Your hand closes around the corncob doll you wear on a gut string around your neck.

Gwenika says, once she helped a fawn that had broken its leg. She kept a splint tied to its lame leg all through the summer. When winter came, the fawn had grown into a deer and could walk again. But I will never heal another deer, adds Gwenika. Why not? My mother slit its throat and we ate it, says Gwenika. I didn’t want to, but we were very hungry that winter.